Directly below is the first draft of the first chapter of a book I'm working on, tentatively titled "End This Wicked Marriage: Why Evangelical Christianity Must End Its Unholy Union with the Republican Party." Please pass along any suggestions to improve the chapter.
January 8, 2004, a day that will live in infamy. That was the day on which the very first episode of The Apprentice aired on NBC TV. Not coincidentally, it also was the day when a failed real estate developer was given the opportunity to re-invent himself, to transform his image from unsuccessful entrepreneur to genius billionaire business mogul.
Prior to that date, Donald Trump was a novelty, a tabloid oddity whose name and photo often appeared alongside zany yarns about Elvis sightings in Hoboken or Martian rays disrupting TV transmissions in Roswell. The would-be tycoon had filed for six corporate chapter 11 bankruptcies, despite having inherited at least $413 million from his father. The gap between Donald Trump’s self-portrayal as a prosperous entrepreneur and his actual business performance was as vast as his gargantuan ego.
The Apprentice, then, gave Trump the platform he desired in order to trounce the truth and perpetuate and expand his bogus narrative of himself as the ultimate self-made billionaire. And countless naïve viewers bought the blather with less consideration than they’d typically give to a lunch selection on the menu board at McDonald’s. Donald Trump suddenly became as ubiquitous as Big Mac value meals along any town’s fast-food alley—and equally empty of substance. Both were easily attainable, surprisingly satisfying—and dangerously detrimental if overindulged.
Surrender to Celebrity
While Trump was reinventing himself as a “reality” TV star, white evangelical by the millions were being conditioned by “Christian” media to venerate charismatic “Christian” celebrities. Christian Television Network, SonLife Broadcasting Network, NRB Network, Trinity Broadcasting Network (TBN), Christian Broadcasting Network, and a host of similar TV channels—plus scores of YouTube channels—promoted evangelical celebrities such as Franklin Graham, Pat Robertson, Joel Osteen, Jerry Falwell Jr., Joyce Meyer, Creflo Dollar, John Hagee, Jim Bakker, Kenneth Copeland, Paula White, David Barton, John MacArthur, Robert Jeffers, and hundreds of other similar theologically shallow shysters.
In an age of lightweight literacy—particularly biblical literacy—evangelicals were subsisting on a diet of theological fast food. TBN et al were feverishly serving up their spiritual Big Macs, BK Whoppers, and greasy fries to a hungry but still undernourished clientele. While a few of the evangelical celebrities offered more substantial biblical fare, most centered their messages on name-it-and-claim-it, have-it-your-way doctrinal deviations, or on “owning the libs” in the furiously fuming culture war. Deep Scriptural study largely gave way to petty platitudes and superficial sermons.
Biblical Ignorance
Because of their biblical ignorance, most evangelicals were—and still are—susceptible to manipulation by fast-talking hucksters who are adept at developing shallow, rambling homilies out of a few perversely twisted Bible passages. How bad is this ignorance?
According to Albert Mohler, a longtime leader within the Southern Baptist Convention, “The larger scandal is biblical ignorance among Christians. Choose whichever statistic or survey you like, the general pattern is the same. America's Christians know less and less about the Bible.”[i] One telling evidence Mohler cited of that ignorance is obvious in this result from a George Barna Survey: “According to 82 percent of Americans, ‘God helps those who help themselves,’ is a Bible verse. Those identified as born-again Christians did better—by one percent.”[ii] Yes, that survey found that 81 percent of respondents who identified as born-again Christians believed that “God helps those who help themselves,” is a real Bible verse. No doubt it’s mere coincidence that 81 percent of white evangelicals voted for Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election.
Guardrails for an Honest Faith
Even when evangelicals do take the time to study the Bible they claim to revere, all too often they do so with a pre-determined conclusion. In other words, rather than letting the passages conform and transform their thinking, they conform the passages to their own rigid, immovable interpretation—generally established either through deference to a favored teacher or through cultural osmosis, as in “God helps those who help themselves.”
Richard T. Hughes, professor emeritus at Pepperdine University and Messiah College, suggests three guardrails that could have kept evangelical Christians “true to their own prophetic faith.” Those three guardrails are “a serious engagement with the biblical text, a knowledge of Christian history, and critical thinking.” But, as Hughes notes, “white evangelicals have, for the most part, abandoned [all three].”[iii]
Serious Engagement with the Biblical Text
This element requires more than merely reading the text. Serious engagement with the text necessitates that the reader first understand the writer’s intended audience and purpose. Moses did not write the book of Exodus to you or me to apply as we choose. Nor did David write the Psalms nor Paul his epistles to modern-day Americans—not to us corporately, and especially not to you or me individually. Reading Bible books as if they were aimed at us individually can lead to gross misinterpretations and applications—yet doing is not an uncommon practice. It is, in fact, encouraged by the evangelical celebrities listed above.
For nearly eight years I worked as a curriculum editor at a prominent international evangelical Bible study ministry. Since its founding, the ministry had taken what is referred to in theological circles as a dispensational approach to interpreting the Bible—though not in an overt manner. About halfway through my tenure at that ministry, upper management—particularly within the publishing department, where I worked—experienced dramatic turnover.
The new managers preferred a different interpretive approach (referred to as a hermeneutic). When I raised some concerns about the change from the ministry’s origins, one of the replies I got from my new immediate supervisor was that when she was a teen, she’d expressed to her pastor that she was claiming an Old Testament passage as a personal promise to her. (I can’t remember now what the passage was.) That pastor—a dispensationalist—counseled her that the passage was written to an Israelite kingdom thousands of years ago—in a different dispensation—and that claiming it as a promise directly for her was presumptuous and likely to leave her disappointed. She would not accept his counsel; she left that church and turned against any type of dispensational teaching.
Was her pastor wrong or insensitive to disabuse her of the notion that one may “claim” a Bible passage as a personal promise? Many among today’s conservative evangelical churches would say yes, that pastor was wrong. After all, Paul wrote to his protégé, Timothy, “All Scripture is God-breathed and is useful for teaching, rebuking, correcting and training in righteousness” (2 Timothy 3:16). Yes, Paul did write that statement. But one must differentiate between useful for and directly applicable to. A hammer can be useful for cracking open a walnut shell, but that’s not what it was designed to do. Certainly the principle of applying force to a hard-but-breakable surface makes a hammer an acceptable tool for cracking walnut shells, but that does not mean that the nut retailer Diamond of California should scrap their mechanized shelling process in favor of hundreds of hammer-wielding nutcrackers.
Regarding biblical applications, one should not assume, for example, that a Divine promise to an ancient people can or should be directly appropriated by a present-day Christian believer. One today would be sorely mistaken in trying to literally live out, for example, this passage from Jeremiah’s prophetic book: “You are my war club, my weapon for battle—with you I shatter nations, with you I destroy kingdoms” (Jeremiah 51:20).
That does not mean, however, that the passage is meaningless for today’s Christians. Rather than trying to apply the passage directly as stated, one must discover the universal principle at the foundation of the passage. To do that, first one must determine the audience—direct and indirect—for this passage. The earlier portions of the chapter plainly state that the passage is all about God’s judgment on the nation of Babylon. “See, I will stir up the spirit of a destroyer against Babylon and the people of Leb Kamai. I will send foreigners to Babylon to winnow her and to devastate her land” (Jeremiah 51:1-2).
A Knowledge of Christian History
Jeremiah wrote this passage to his people, the Israelites, but he wrote it about how—and through whom—He would execute His judgment on Babylon. And by combining our knowledge of this passage with our knowledge of history (Hughes’s second guardrail), we may accurately conclude that Jeremiah was prophesying of the Medo-Persian empire’s conquest of Babylon in 539 BC, an event that in itself, obviously, has no direct bearing on the life of anyone today.
Critical Thinking
So then, since you and I are not part of the ancient Medo-Persian army that defeated the Babylonians, is there an underlying, universal principle in this passage that we can learn from and apply?
Yes, there is, but only in a very broad sense. That principle is that God often works behind the scenes to accomplish His will—and that His followers can take patient comfort in that knowledge. What the passage does not mean, however, is that, for example, the USA as God’s “chosen nation”—the so-called “new Israel”—is His instrument to pour out “holy hell” on its “ungodly” enemies.
Yet I saw similarly unsophisticated Scripture interpretations far too often throughout my evangelical years. I’ve seen it repeatedly over the last four-plus years as white evangelicals have repeatedly mangled and twisted Scripture while defending the wicked man with whom they made a grievous Faustian pact.
The Nebuchadnezzar/Cyrus Fallacy
Triggered by their failure to heed the three guardrails listed above, white American evangelicals have, almost universally, bought into the bizarre narrative that portrays Donald Trump as a modern-day Nebuchadnezzar or Cyrus. That belief—promoted by the evangelical leaders listed earlier, and many more—is that Donald Trump, much like these two pagan kings, is God's choice to lead His people, white evangelicals, back into their Promised Land. Like those two kings, Trump was—some of us would say is—a pagan having no relationship with the true God. But, as the narrative continues, despite Trump's patently ungodly past, God chose him to battle Satan's evil progressives and return America to its Christian roots.
After four years in the brightest of spotlights—during the campaign and beyond—Trump has evidenced little to no behavioral changes. His words and deeds show him to be the same self-centered, arrogant, ignorant, mean-spirited man he's always been. Yet white evangelicals continue to cling to the savior-king analogies. Does their belief have any merit?
Who Were Nebuchadnezzar and Cyrus?
Following the Israelites' initial entry into the biblical Promised Land, it didn't take long for the nation to go astray, eventually leading to a national split between northern and southern kingdoms. The southern kingdom had a few good kings and many bad ones. The northern kingdom went zero for 19. So, not too surprisingly, the northern kingdom was the first to be conquered—by the Assyrians, in around 740 B.C. The southern kingdom held on until the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar conquered them in around 586 B.C. Those southern kingdom inhabitants left alive through the conquest were hauled off to captivity in Nebuchadnezzar's Babylon.
Biblical accounts—as well as other historical records—reveal Nebuchadnezzar to have been an arrogant, boastful, cruel king. Yes, the Bible does say that, notwithstanding Nebuchadnezzar's less-than-stellar character traits, God chose him to work His will in world affairs. The Bible also reveals that, after God put the king through a profound humbling experience, Nebuchadnezzar came to believe in Yahweh. But, despite his change of heart, Nebuchadnezzar did not allow the captive Israelites to return to their Promised Land.
It wasn't until after the Medo-Persians, under King Cyrus, conquered the Babylonians that the prospect of the long-desired return to the Promised Land would again warm Israeli hearts. By most accounts, Cyrus differed from Nebuchadnezzar in that he was more pragmatic and diplomatic than the ruthless Babylonian king. But while Nebuchadnezzar eventually came to believe in Yahweh as the one true God, Cyrus apparently never did.
Which Is Trump?
Is Donald Trump a ruthless Nebuchadnezzar humbled by God into submission, or is he a tactful but unbelieving Cyrus? For those who claim he's the former, may we be given some evidence of his conversion experience, of his humble submission? For those who claim he's the latter, please provide some evidence of his tact and diplomatic acumen.
Real Godly Leadership or Trumpism?
Yes, at times, the Bible claims that God chose to raise up pagan leaders to do His bidding. But the stories reveal that He did so not as His first choice; He did so because His people had gone so far astray that He had to do something dramatic to regain their attention. But, ideally, those Nebuchadnezzar and Cyrus eras never should have happened. Instead, the Israelites should have paid attention to these directives about leaders God gave them through Moses:
When you enter the land the LORD your God is giving you and have taken possession of it and settled in it, and you say, "Let us set a king over us like all the nations around us," be sure to appoint over you a king the LORD your God chooses. He must be from among your fellow Israelites. Do not place a foreigner over you, one who is not an Israelite. The king, moreover, must not acquire great numbers of horses for himself or make the people return to Egypt to get more of them, for the LORD has told you, "You are not to go back that way again." He must not take many wives, or his heart will be led astray. He must not accumulate large amounts of silver and gold. When he takes the throne of his kingdom, he is to write for himself on a scroll a copy of this law, taken from that of the Levitical priests. It is to be with him, and he is to read it all the days of his life so that he may learn to revere the LORD his God and follow carefully all the words of this law and these decrees and not consider himself better than his fellow Israelites and turn from the law to the right or to the left. Then he and his descendants will reign a long time over his kingdom in Israel. - Deuteronomy 17:14-20
What do we see of Donald Trump in that description of what a king (leader) should and should not do? A good king was not to focus on personal wealth or to have "many wives." Instead, he needed to be attentive to Scripture. Donald Trump—a man who has frequently bragged of his greed, his wealth, and his many sexual conquests—was unable, under questioning, to name a favorite book of the Bible. On another occasion, he referred to Second Corinthians as "Two Corinthians." Donald Trump courts evangelicals by making promises to champion their causes, but he has no love for the God they claim to worship. He cares not at all for the Scriptures evangelicals claim to hold dear.
"Can You Believe That Bullshit?"
In his book Disloyal, Trump’s former personal attorney and “fixer,” Michael Cohen, removes all doubt about Donald Trump’s pious pretenses. Cohen—who often accompanied his client to various functions, from profane to sacred—reveals numerous accounts of Trump’s behind-the-scenes disdain for the people most responsible for putting him in office. Cohen wrote that he recognized Trump’s remarkable manipulative abilities when he saw that his client “could lie directly to the faces of some of the most powerful religious leaders in the country, and they believed him.” Following one infamous religious gathering in which a group of evangelicals “laid hands” on the presidential candidate and prayed for him, Trump asked Cohen, “Can you believe that bullshit?”
Cohen could not. But tens of millions of white evangelicals did—and still do, unwaveringly. Such is the power of 21st-century celebrity, and the gullibility of 21st-century white evangelicals.
Next: Chapter 2, "Why She Was Receptive"
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